One of the most common questions I get asked in class about pivot tables is “Well, how do I know what goes where?” . In previous versions of Excel I would have recommended the following..
Go to the ever-wonderful Google and type in “How to plan a pivot table in Excel” (the “in Excel piece” is important as it then excludes all the other pivot tables out there). You could also check out this tutorial from Microsoft or one of my favourites from Debra Dalgleish.
However what I am recommending now in class is the following.
Convert your data to a table, and then let Excel recommend a few pivot tables to you. Another option – which is only available if you have a 365 subscription- is to use the Analyze Data feature on your home ribbon. This will actually look at your data and come up with some questions. What’s fun about this is that it doesn’t always seem to have the same questions…
Here is the link to the data I am using and you can view the video here.